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How to Get Major Press For Your Startup, Small Business, Or Website (with No Connections and Without a PR firm)

The benefits of getting featured in a major newspaper, on a huge blog, in an industry-leading magazine, or on TV are clear:

The RIGHT coverage can flood your business with hundreds (and sometimes THOUSANDS) of new users, prospects, and customers. (Who doesn’t want more customers? :-D)

The RIGHT coverage will make your phone blowup with calls (and text messages) from friends, family, and colleagues (“Dude, I just saw you on…”)

The RIGHT coverage will give your business an INSTANT credibility boost (Ever wonder why people show the logos of places they’ve been featured? )

The question is “How do I land major press (with no connections or a pr firm)?

The Drafting Technique: (The World’s Easiest Way To Land Press For Your Business)

Over the last few years I’ve built several successful websites for myself. I’ve also helped many other people build up their websites from scratch.

And while some people “think” I have some natural talent at building sites, attracting subscribers, and getting users, I can tell you this:

Learning to attract people to your startup, small business, and website is NOT something you’re born with. It’s a skill that you can learn. And when you have the right person teaching you the skills, you can learn them fast.

That’s why I’m proud to share what I call “The Drafting Technique” with you today.

It’s a simple press-getting technique I’ve personally used over the last few years to land major media. Many of my clients have also used this same technique to get major media and make a bunch of money as well (like Katrina)

Watch this short video:

Now as you know, this is just one of many techniques I’ve developed. Some of the other techniques are available in my premium training called Blog that Converts, but you’ll hear more about that next week. So, keep your eyes peeled. And if you’re not on the email list, hop on it.

That said, you may be wondering, “How do I use the drafting technique?”

The Simple Step-By-Step Process To Using “The Drafting Technique” To Land Press

There are three simple steps for using “The Drafting Technique.”

Step 1: Figure out what you’d like to promote.

Step 2: Find people who are interested in it.

Step 3: Persuade those people to cover you.

Let’s go over each step in detail.

Step 1: What Would You Like To Promote?

When you’re looking for something to promote, in general, it will likely be a piece of content. If you’re a startup, it may be your new software service, but for bloggers, it’s mainly a piece of content.

Now you really can’t skimp on your content. You’ve got to create content that’s TRULY WORTH PROMOTING. If you don’t, when you start using the Drafting Technique (in step 2), you’re going to burn your bridges with people for life.

While I can’t tell you what you should write about specifically, there are proven “content archetypes” that I cover in my premium training. These archetypes make people WANT to promote you, but again, you’ll hear more about that next week.

For now, let’s assume you’re starting out with a SOLID piece of content that’s worthy of attention.

Step 2: Find People Who Are Interested In Covering You

This is where The Drafting Technique comes into play…

Remember, after you watched the video, it’s all about finding people who have a history of covering what you’d like to have covered.

Why? Because there’s no friction!

(If you didn’t watch the video, and you don’t know what I’m talking about, stop being lazy. Go watch the video).

That said, there are 3 types of things that are extremely easy to “draft” behind:

1. Competitors

Let’s say one of your main competitors scored a HUGE writeup on an industry blog or magazine. That’s your opportunity to land major media as well. How?

You can reach out to the journalist (or blogger) who covered your competitor, and begin building a relationship with them. Eventually that relationship can lead to press.

Or, better yet, you can reach out to one of the competitors of the journalist that covered your competitor, and convince that person to cover you instead.

(Wow, I said the word competitor a lot there, but you get the point).

Again, this works splendidly well because there will be less friction between you and the major press that you want… and deserve.

2. Topics

This is one of my favorite ways to use “The Drafting Technique.”

As an example, back when I wrote the article “The Content is King Myth” debunked, I used “The Drafting Technique,” to promote it.

How?

AFter the article was done, I did a simple Google search for “Design is King” and “Content is King.” I then reach out to everyone who wrote about design is king, and shared this new research with them. They enjoyed it because it confirmed their previously stated opinion.

I also reached out to people who said “Content is King” because it made their opinion invalid.

All-in-all, what was I doing? I was “Drafting” behind the topic of “Content is King” and “Design is King.”

3. People

And finally, here’s the last way to use “The Drafting Technique.”

Like with topics, you can also draft behind people. As an example, when I first got started building Social Triggers, I analyzed some of the other marketing blogs in the space.

I then Googled the author of those marketing blogs to see where each author was featured or interviewed. I then reached out to those places to see if I could land an interview as well.

It’s that easy.

Step 3: Persuade those people to cover you

This is the big question now, isn’t it? How do you persuade these people to actually cover you?

dude this is killer stuff. I’m definitely going to utilize this to the fullest, and really try and build that relationship with the journalist.

You don’t need advice, I know! especially from a newbie like me, but picture if you did this video while telling a story of a great nascar race where someone drafted the final lap of the indy 500 behind the first place guy…

Wow. Makes so much sense. My 14 year old daughter has her own candle business. It is taking off but I we are trying to get her more exposure. There was a recent article of a local candle artisan so I am researching the journalist right now. Thanks.

Derek, let me tell you man, I am impressed by the simplicity and straightness of each and every one of your posts. I find them very useful and will use the blog as a precious tool from now on.
Thank you also for getting back so quickly and so nicely to the email I sent you earlier today.

I’m going to draft behind some content. Thanks for bringing this together for me, Derek. I’d been wondering how to debunk some long held beliefs. Hadn’t thought of it even as a visibility opportunity. I know if you can give a reporter the main parts of a story, they have more of a reason to want to feature you. Basically, you want to get on their “talking-heads” list or “quotable expert” list. I had those when I was in news.

Why is it every information marketing expert has to use IM industry as an example for every marketing technique. I was really impressed with the drafting analogy you used to describe the process but your theory lucks real world proof of concept. Yes you used it…but that is on IM industry and on top that you are you. But how can a start-up with very little money, time and experiences can pull this off?

Great vid…all of your stuff is great! I blog on my new tennis/travel site. I’m looking for more traffic through mags and tennis bloggers. I really have zero competitors as my destination is Spain. Any competitors I do have would be selling into the USA. Question? Is this Drafting Technique the same as say, Guest Blogging? I have recently gone out to tennis bloggers asking if could guest blog. Same? Not the same?
Thanks!

I totally believe in the univiers working with you. I have been thinking about this exact topic for the last week wondering how to get more press. So glad I saw the shared post ~ really great content!
I am totally implementing this strategy.

I once worked in sales for a local business newspaper. Every morning on the fax machine (…yes, it was 14 yrs ago) there was a huge pile of press releases. Most of the press releases followed the standard cookie-cutter format by bragging about a new service or widget. The PR’s that did stand out were one’s that were indeed helpful or provided insight into a current issue(s) that affected the community or industry from the business point of view. Even if we did not use the good PR’s right away, those good PR’s offered the journalists leads and provided a contact name for future stories.

I’ll be doing a blend of drafting behind a person and a topic. Mainly, I’m doing this via smart backlinking analysis and tracing the online “footsteps” of people that I respect and are doing a great job producing content.

I’m already having great results finding blogs to engage with and, most important, people to build relationships with. Plus, all of this helps me figure out the topics that people are talking about and identify the holes where I can jump in and provide the right type of content.

Hi Derek! I’m going to draft behind a person, Gabby Bernstein. I’m not sure that I can actually call her a competitor of mine, since I haven’t even officially opened my practice, but I’m confused about the difference between a competitor and a person. Once I’ve built up valuable content (in the works!), I will reach out to the journalists who’ve covered her for Elle (Rachel Rosenblit), Experience Life (Laine Bergeson), and Well+GoodNYC (Lisa Elaine Held) using your incentive blog tips!

Can you elaborate on the difference between a competitor and a person? Thank you so much as always!

I’ve been reading your blog for a few months now and find your information, approach and tips really helpful.

I decided to apply the drafting technique as you suggested and I want to share my results…

I had been wanting to do exactly what you recommended but didn’t know where to start, didn’t even know how to put it into words. So when I saw your post, it was as if it was written for me (thank you).

I followed your suggestions step by step. First I decided what I wanted to promote and write about, who I wanted to approach and then worked on the persuasion part.

My website is about tourism in El Salvador, so I decided to contact a major newspaper there that has a tourism blog on their website as well as a printed tourism magazine that is distributed with their weekend edition of the newspaper.

To my surprise, they responded the very next day with a big YES! They were actually glad that I had offered to add a piece of quality content to their blog and even said that the doors were opened for me to become a regular contributor if I wanted.

This has now given me the the amazing opportunity to get my name and brand out there in front of the entire country and also in front of the millions of expats who read their newspaper online everyday… All I can say is wow!!!

Based on these results, I wanted to finally leave a comment here and say thank you! You were right, the drafting technique really is very easy even for someone like me with no marketing or PR background.

I’ve had my eye on a number of competitors in my vertical for some time now. Gonna get Googling today and see if I can pinpoint some authors who love writing about innovative companies blending social/environmental-good into their business models. The simplicity in this Drafting Technique is too damn good!

Derek. Great video with solid advice. I would love to know the name of the company that made the animated introduction for this video. I have been looking for a company that makes animated introductions just like this and haven’t been having much luck.

Hey Derek: I learned a bunch of this from an early PR mentor, but between watching YOUR video, and reading one of the comments, everything I thought I knew came into sharp focus–the kind that makes things look more probable or actionable. I’m still in my first week of the new blog, and your course, but plan to re-visit this page and actually do something for my site.

Thanks for the great “boil-down” on a topic few people really understand!

Are there some topics that just don’t work well with blogging? My company just started a blog a few months back. We build websites and web software for commercial property management companies. This particular industry isn’t very quick to adopt technology. Needless to say we haven’t really gotten much traffic.

I am thinking about getting your course, but am worried a blog just wont work well in this industry. Is a blog not a good idea for this type of industry?

Holla Derek, I’ve been receiving your emails for the last month or so. I love your direct approach, it’s clear and super easy to follow. I am yet to try the drafting technique. I write a Lifestyle blog the Fabulous Times featuring regular articles on positivity, vintage, fashion, travel, music, food and all things fabulous! As a blogger covering a variety of subjects would you focus on one at a time i.e identify journalists writing about a specific topic, food for example? or would you suggest identifying journalists covering an umbrella term like ‘Lifestyle’ or ‘Fabulous’? Massively appreciate your work/ advice/ no BS approach. Can’t wait to try this technique out. Big Love Christine

I get it, I totally get it. I’ve actually gotten regular press almost every month for the past year..so there is an interest in my personal story, which is the basis of my blog. But I was hoping to get bigger press and I know just where to look now! I’ll be going topic + competitor…wish me luck!

Derek, unfortunately this technique won’t work for my industry. ONLY very successful people are featured in some interviews. It’s not even common. However, there are major and famous blogs in the industry but you can’t draft after as it’s a very competitive industry as I explained and they won’t feature a competitor.

But I’m sure this technique can be of a help to many other industries. Thanks for sharing.

Do you cultivate the relationship with the topic you want to draft with? OR cultivate with some other topic, then slide your foot in the door further with the real topic you want to be covered on, later in time?

Hi Derek,
I love your approach to getting media. Your “drafting” idea also applies to the world of cycling…

This technique may be easier to apply depending on what your main topic is. How do you see this working in a crowded space? Perhaps the real message here is – don’t expect to get serious media coverage unless you have something substantial or important to say…
What do you think? It would be great to see a real example in action.
~Duru

I do this with my entertainment columns all the time, I find a topical hook to lead into my piece.
I find it helps both in finding a worthwhile topic to talk about if I am having trouble writing and in making the content accessible to the reader, even if the piece is not directly related to the topic of the day.

It is a very good technique and I am not even surprised, because you always come up with genuine and unique methods for growing and/or marketing one’s online business.

However, in this case I do not think that it is applicable to everyone.

For instance, for a niche blog with a very narrow theme (which may also mean the existance of a limited number of large blogs, if at all) to find a real newsworthy topic, or to find a large blog that would be interested in the narrow theme is like looking for a needle in a huge hay.

One thing for sure, dough, that if I could find a blog or journalist interested in my subject matter, I would not need to be concern a competition.

So, while the idea and the technique is unique and could deliver great results to some, in my case I may need to go through multiple seasons before perhaps an applicable situation would happen.

Hey, Jayne, I totally understand your reservations (I’ve had them myself!) but I think you may be preemptively dismissing yourself. I’ll tell why:
1) Every pond, no matter how small, has big fish and small fish. Being fish number two can attract a lot of attention in a small pond. Nice little wavelets and ripples….
2) Every micro niche is part of a macro niche, and guess what? The intel you have on that level of the niche is something they may not be aware of and so, again, getting exposure of ANY kind at the next level would be like throwing a big rock…serious waves and movement!
3) You are a specialist, and another guess what? Journalists love specialists, someone who can shed a light on a subject that most people would never know about. Again: being the third and smallest person quoted in a bigger story with a bigger lead is not a bad thing…

All this in my opinion, anyway. My practically unknown PR mentor used the same strategies Derek is talking about to get a one-line quote in a major magazine feature. And he pitched such a provocative offer, that his phone was ringing off the hook with call from CEOs who had read the article. About seventy potential clients.

Now that’s a major ‘boulder” effect! Talk about business kaboom! The lesson is, the bolder you get, in your own mind, the more boulders you will toss…

I encourage you to see yourself bigger. After all, that’s why we are all here, right?

This works brilliantly! I used this exact technique to get ongoing press coverage for the oldest, most wide read golf magazine in the UK. They needed help figuring out a brief drought season and how to take care of courses, I offered to give them some ideas.

Then offered to help them produce marketing content via video and voila! Here you go: golfclubmanagement.net

I was not thinking about it like that but since social media and google have not been working for me I knew I had to do something diferent so I reached to a radio station and they are happy to feature me next thursday. This is my first attempt to land major press and I am getting it, and I fell it was very easy. I am very pleased with that.

I do get some traffic from social media but cant get them to subscribe…now I have a plan…

If after the radio interview I do get a lot of traffic but the subscribers numbers does not increase substantially…then i will know it is a content and design issue and will work hard in that before trying a second attempt at major press…

If the subscribers numbers do increase…then ill be reaching more people to feature me and going easier on the design and content improvements.

I’m a volunteer with a local animal shelter, and I’ll share this technique with board members and show them how they can boost the animal shelter’s presence within our area and state. Although I’m a new volunteer, some of the board members are open to hearing what I have to say and what I have to offer in terms of communications and fund raising.

P.S.

It would be great if the animal shelter received national and international attention.

Derek you rock !!! –
Also left comment on Facebook and I can tell you for sure that drafting DOES work as I expreienced it myself with my original blog that landed me the opportunity to have a blog in one of Argentina’s top newspapers: http://www.lagaceta.com.ar/blogs/untucumanoinlondon

First off, I’m huge NASCAR fan (Go Dale, Jr.) so I love that you call this the Drafting Technique.

Secondly, what you say is all absolutely true. I did have a few years experience in PR, but I had been out so long I had no connections, especially at the national level.

I leveraged/bump drafted the recession. My husband lost a six-figure job, and we found ourselves in serious trouble. I had been doing stand-up (when I could in a town with no comedy club) and cleaning houses during the day (with a Masters degree). I was trying to transition into speaking, so I used my story to draft with reporters who were writing about real folks during the Great Recession.
Did it work? Yes. I’ve gotten full color spreads in Woman’s Day, Reader’s Digest , and that RD piece was featured on Good Morning America with a reporter using MY cleaning tips. I’ve been able to write for CNN and the Comic Bible , without an agent or a huge book deal.

The key is find an angle, build a relationship, be nice, be yourself… and the sky is the limit!

I’m living proof that if a cleaning lady with no connections can do it, anyone can.

Then there’s that whole Marie Forleo “thing”! Thanks, D for sharing such great content!

I would like to draft behind a topic. This has given me plenty of food for thought and I can’t wait to learn more about how you went about building the right relationships. You keep teasing us with the training. Looking forward to it!

Thank goodness! I’ve been wanting a post with more detail on the drafting technique since you first posted on it. I am curious to know if you think this technique would work as well with a podcast as it does with articles.

Anyway, our plan is to draft the topic that seems to be doing the rounds of the media at the moment (which we have a very contrarian view) that:
“Kickstarter is only one bad project away from a huge backlash” or it’s variant “People are suffering Kickstarter fatigue and avoiding backing projects”. Of course, the actual data we’re seeing suggests the complete opposite. Every financial metric shows Kickstarter projects doing better than ever, and in truth their have already been a number of bad projects, but the overall concept just keeps on rolling on. Still, there seems to be a longing, particularly by much of the mainstream press for Kickstarter to fail, which is the concept I think we can draft with an alternate viewpooint.

Well, Kickstarter themselves have put out data that addresses a lot of it, so it’s largely just taking some time to put it together (like that while projects have more than doubled in the last 12 months, with goal amounts going up, that there has been no drop in the percentage of projects funded).

An infographic is an interesting idea. We tried one of these on Kickstarter’s million dollar projects with the drafting technique earlier in the year, with mixed results. We got a couple of people sharing it on their site, including some larger sites, but I have a feeling that Kickstarter infographics have been a bit overdone at this point, lowering people’s interest. (Crowdsourcing.org has an entire category for them, for goodness sake).

It’s been fascinating though to see Amanda Palmer (one of Kickstarter’s first million dollar projects) completely cancel her tour (part of what was being Kickstarted) with almost no-one even batting an eyelid. If you look at the update where she did it though, you can see that she had a very good reason, that people could emotionally relate to, that was honest and well communicated and with every attempt to handle it well. At the end of the day though, the huge engagement she had with her audience (partly from Kickstarter) meant people pulled together with her instead of tearing her apart. I think the higher level of engagement and communication in Kickstarter projects is the glue that prevents what would have created a PR disaster anywhere else. A lot of people overlook this. Anyway, save it for the post Piers!

That is funny because just last night at 1 in the morning when I had finished doing a bunch of work I thought to myself…”I should read the reviews and press on some of my competitors…keep up with the times”.

I started reading them and then read around the blogs and e-papers publishing stuff about these competitors and it hit me….these people like to cover this kind of stuff! They already did it….

But I agree with your vid…that contacting them cant be pitchy….

I am a true believe in the give-back and the value of genuine gifting or mentorship…whatever you want to call it, even the pass it on effect…so I e-mailed them asking if there was anything I could offer them in terms of content…wether it be putting together some of the most recent research on the value of Play (my product is all about parents actually playing old-school …like really playing with their kids) and then some great visuals I have which I can pass along if they need images too.

I will let you know what comes back.

I was feeling a bit nervous about the random reach out but I figured….hey, can’t hurt eh?

I wouldn’t see why not. If you find a band similar to you, and they get press, that’s your opportunity to get similar coverage.

Think about how movie executives pitch movies. I read in the Made to STick, by the Heath Brothers, that when movie executives pitched the movie “Speed,” they went around saying “It’s DIe Hard On A Bus.”

And imagine how easy it was to convince movie reviewers who previously covered Die Hard… to cover Speed.

Will test and let you know Derek. Hopefully I will have enough results to conduct a case study – and find some universal principles that apply to more industries. Would be a miracle.

I hear ywhat you’re saying, it’s like an advice I got from a music executive when I first started out: “Find a famous, similar band and describe your band compared to them”. We are “Depeche Mode with more guitars”.

Have you applied this technique for any of your videos yet? How did it work?

The one possibility that came to mind right away is for content related to “goal-setting and resolutions.”

I know this topic is very popular especially at this time of the year.

My action steps would be to research a few top success coaching sites that wrote about goal-setting. I could then offer my perspective based on my specific coach training. I could share how my ideas either validate, extend, or contradict their ideas.